MARK TRAHANT, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

Published 10:00 pm, Saturday, November 15, 2003

My great-uncle used to travel around the Northwest and peddle democratic institutions.

During the '30s and '40s, the Roosevelt administration launched a campaign to bring "self-determination" or democracy to American Indian tribal governments across the country. It was considered the next step in "progress" and was authorized by an act of Congress.

George P. Lavatta was given the job of promoting tribal constitutions. He would travel to a reservation in Washington, Idaho or Oregon. Once there he'd reveal a model constitution and try to sell folks on this "better" form of government.

The congressional act allowed tribes to say yes or no. And many tribes enacted variations of the model constitution, while others passed and stuck with some form of traditional governance.

I've been thinking about my relative and this business of model constitutions. It raises all sorts of questions: How does one really sell democracy? And, more troubling, how do you know when it works? Is there a test for what constitutes a democratic society? Is there an objective, agreed measure of freedom?

Start with the notion of selling democracy. The constitutional models appropriated the idea of a "check and balance" from the U.S. Constitution -- but with a colonial twist.

The official governing council, at least under most tribal constitutions, is an elected business council. But before laws, ordinances and contracts could be put into effect, that council must submit them for approval to the U.S. secretary of the interior (or a designate). In effect: the U.S. government decided it should serve as the check and the balance.

But more than six decades of practice do not show that the tribes with the model constitutions to be more democratic. Indeed, I think many of the tribes that rejected the formatted constitutions have been among the more innovative and representative.

The Navajo Nation's peacemaker court, for example, stresses community and consensus over fact-finding. Former Chief Justice Robert Yazzie describes the court this way: "Imagine a system of law that permits anyone to say anything they like during the course of a dispute, and no authority figure has to determine what is 'true.' Think of a system with an end goal of restorative justice, which uses equality and the full participation of disputants in a final decision. If we say of law that 'life comes from it,' then where there is hurt, there must be healing."

In that context, it would be easy to see when the peacemaker court works. If there's family restoration, it works. If not, well, then there's always the formal legal system.

He said: "I do not think that the method of voting is a criterion for democracy, though I should certainly say that unless there were some way in which each member of the community could register his opinion on important political matters the situation was not one that could be described as democratic."

What determines a democracy? Hutchins said every citizen must feel that he or she is taking part in important political events that affect their lives.

"A democratic community is a self-governing community," he said. "Every member of the community must have a part in his government. The real test of democracy is the extent to which everybody in society is involved in effective political discussion."

In some ways that definition smarts. Consider this month's election -- and the number of people who choose to involve themselves in the discussion. King County had 1,035,392 registered voters and about 35 percent cast a ballot. Seattle was only slightly better at 36 percent. Some of the smaller towns in the region had enough voters to claim numbers in the 40s or low 50s.

But that's only registered voters. If you add the number of people who could vote, who didn't register into that mix, the percentage declines considerably.

Does that mean we have given up on being a self-governing community? Should our political discourse be limited to those who care?

Several readers called this week to let me know we should not be quick to judge the election results with "the people's choice" or similar language. Too few people voted to know that, the callers said.

I doubt my uncle George would have bought that line. He was always proud of his role promoting constitutions because at least it made people think about what kind of government they wanted. Even if they don't bother to participate.

I cling to the notion that the best measure of freedom is when we encourage and embrace dissent. When we allow uncomfortable words and ideas to be spread, we test our ideas in a way that transcends narrow participation in an election. It's this democratic experiment that I hope we understand well enough to export.